


Aggrieve

by Princex_N



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, Rose teaches Karkat t play violin, Violins, a beautiful friendship was born
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-03
Updated: 2014-09-03
Packaged: 2018-02-14 10:48:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2188887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Princex_N/pseuds/Princex_N
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Rose teaches Karkat to play the violin because reasons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aggrieve

**Author's Note:**

> it was all inspired by [this](http://nuclearcarrots.tumblr.com/post/15332871548/so-i-really-like-the-idea-of-karkat-playing-violin) and the fact that it's four in the morning and i want to play my own violin but I can't because four in the morning....

You find the weird thing on the floor in the hallway.

You don't know what it's doing here, and you don't particularly care. It's right fucking there, just laying around where anybody could trip on it, and probably die because you're all a bunch of unlucky clumsy fucks, there's not a doubt in your mind that there's at least one person on this bullshit meteor that could pull that dumbass stunt off. You're pretty sure that you'd seen Rose with it at some point during the game, before things had gone to shit and you'd just been watching. You hadn't paid much attention to what it was, or was purpose it had served, because it seemed pretty fucking unimportant at the time. Even now, it seems like an utter waste of your time.

Sitll, you pluck at the taut little strings cautiously, and wind up nearly dropping the stupid fucking thing because you weren't expecting it to make a noise like that. You should quit fucking around with this thing, you've already established that you don't care about it and that it's a waste of your time, which is precious even though you have spare time practically coming out of your fucking ears as of late. You glance around, checking to make sure that you're the only one in the hallway before you pluck at the strings again.

You sort of like it.

You waste gog knows how much time playing around with this thing before Rose pops out of fucking nowhere behind you with a, "Karkat? Is that my violin?, startling you so badly you nearly drop the fucking thing again.

"What the fuck is a violin?" you snarl, turning to glare at her. You don't let go of the noisemaker, and make no attempt to pass it over to her.

"That is a violin," she says, pointing to the wooden thing in your hands. You look down at it and then back up at her suspiciously. "It fell out of my sylladex earlier. I've been looking for it."

"What is it for?" you ask, handing it over. You don't do so with any sort of reluctance or disappointment, because that would be stupid. You don't care about this thing, you really don't.

She raises an eyebrow at you, and you glare at her harder. "It plays music," he says once she's finished silently judging you with her facial expression. (Stupid humans and their dumbfuck body language, none of it even makes sense. Why would she tilt her head back to look superior, all it does is bare her throat to you. Humans are fucking annoying.) "Would you like me to show you?"

You narrow your eyes at her and try to decipher if she's joking or what, but you don't see any blatant mockery in her eyes, and it isn't like there's anyone else around. There isn't really a need for a leader anymore, and you were a shit leader in the first place, let's be honest, but you are still the leader, and you're not about to lose any face over a 'violin'. But eventually, you nod.

She pulls out a stick, and you take a step back and wonder if this was all some bullshit trap because now she's pulling out fucking weapons. You've established pretty firmly that you're both on the same side, but that hadn't stopped anyone else on your side from pulling weapons on and killing each other. But all she does is drag the stick over the strings, and instead of the short plucking noise that you'd been making earlier, a pretty drawn out sound rings out into the air.

You like this noise more than the earlier one, and you're very careful to keep your face in a hard scowl while you listen, but goddamn, it's nice. Whatever she's playing is slow and sounds almost resentful, and you like it too.

When she finishes, she raises an eyebrow at you again.

"What did you think?" she asks, a smug little smirk on her face.

You wrinkle your nose, but you admit, "It was cool." Then you glare at the floor. You've never heard her play this thing before, which means that she doesn't play it a lot, which basically means that you found this neat new noise and now you're never going to be able to hear it again.

She seems to pick up on your train of thought. "Would you like me to teach you how to play?"

You're so surprised by the offer that you blurt out, "Really?" before you can stop yourself. You try to recover from the break in character, but you realize that there's not really a way to take tit back without sounding like you don't want to learn, so you've backed yourself into a corner, and remain stubbornly silent after your outburst.

Rose just smirks at you. Of course she does.

"It would be my pleasure, Karkat," she says, and that's that.

==

The thing turns out to be very fucking hard to play.

"You aren't..."

"I KNOW I'M NOT FUCKING DOING IT RIGHT!! IT SOUNDS LIKE UTTER HORSEBEAST-SHIT, OF COURSE I'M NOT DOING IT CORRECTLY!!!" you shout.

You've been at this for hours, and the only noise that you've been able to successfully make with this stick - the bow- has been a godawful screeching noise that rivals your own lusus'.

Which is to say, you suck.

You really have to give props to Rose here, which says a whole lot, because she's been putting up with you and this fucking noise for nearly two days now. If it was you, you probably would have stormed out after five minutes of hearing this noise. But she's still here, for some reason, and you have to wonder how Egbert had managed to become the leader of their session over her.

She sighs and rolls her eyes at you. "You have to use moderation, Karkat. Do you know what that means?"

You get the feeling that she's being sarcastic. Sarcasm is a fucking plague. "Of course I know what it means. I wasn't pupated yesterday," you snarl anyway.

"Okay then. You need to not press down on the strings so hard, while also refraining from pressing down too lightly."

You growl to yourself in irritations, because this is getting ridiculous and you don't think you're going to have the patience to continue trying to make this monstrosity work if it doesn't stop making that fucking noise soon.

You sarcastically exaggerate the care that you put into exerting pressure with the bow on the strings. Rose doesn't move any of her facial muscles except to raise an eyebrow. Then, when the noise comes out actually sounding right, the two of you share a look of surprise.

Then she smiles at you. "Excellent," she says, while you're still staring at the instrument in shock. "Now we can move on."

==

After you mastered using the bow, the rest comes relatively easy. It's easier than coding was, which, by extension, means that you're a lot better at this than you had been at coding.

You still refuse to play anywhere that someone else could hear you, because you don't feel like listening to any of the chucklefucks on this meteor laughing at you about it, but the meteor is big enough that it's relatively easy for you to find a place to hide away and practice without having to worry about someone running into you.

A few weeks later, Rose shows up at your block. She'd mostly just left you alone once you'd gotten the hang of the finger placement and reading the sheet music, but she has a seemingly endless supply of music pages that she's been sharing with you. You feel a little bad, since you have her violin and she isn't able to play, but she says that she wasn't playing much anyway, and that she's just glad that someone is using the thing.

You're not about to show that you feel bad about it regardless, so you just sort of smother the feeling instead.

But she shows up, and you're a little curious because it's been a while since she'd dropped by, and it doesn't look like she has any music for you, and you hadn't asked for any new pages anyway, and you go ahead and let her in.

"Hello, Karkat," she says, and you shrug halfheartedly and wonder what the fuck she's doing here. "I was wondering if you could possibly return my violin to me."

Your chest seizes a little, and you want to say that No, it is not fucking possible for you to split with this thing now, but it isn't yours. And you're not a complete douchebag, so you hand it over reluctantly, and don't say anything because you don't think you can trust yourself to not fuck it up tremendously.

She picks up on it, of course she does, since she's the only human in the entire group that you've met that's capable of picking up on things that aren't blatantly obvious.

"Oh! Don't worry, Karkat. I have something to give you in return."

"What the fuck could I possibly want in return?" you ask, crossing your arms and lowering your head defensively. She smirks at you knowingly, and captchalogues her violin, trading it for something else from her sylladex, which she hands to you.

You open the case suspiciously, because she's still smirking at you, and you're not about to just trust her. But you open the black case, and can only blink in surprise when you find a gray violin inside.

"I figured that it was about time that you had your own," Rose tells you while you gape like an idiot down at the thing. "It's symbolic, if nothing else. You're quite good. Perhaps we could play together sometime."

You finally pull yourself together enough to stop acting like a brain-dead grub and reply, "Thanks Lalonde," with more sincerity than you're willing to admit to.

That's all you really have to say on the matter.


End file.
